The A-Z of Railhead. K is for K-Bahn….

We are very excited to host a guest post from master storyteller Philip Reeve as part of his A-Z of Railhead tour!

K is for K-Bahn

When I realised that interstellar trains were going to be at the heart of Railhead, one of the first things I did was look up teleportation, in the hope of finding some nifty way that a train could be flipped from one side of the galaxy to another. One of the first things I stumbled across was the concept of Kwisatz Haderech, or ‘the shortening of the way’. This is a concept from Jewish mysticism. Certain very enlightened rabbis, it was believed, were able to transport themselves supernaturally from one place to another…

To science fiction fans, Kwisatz Haderach has another connotation, because it’s one of the names given to the messiah figure in Frank Herbert’s classic space opera Dune. “I can’t use that,” I thought, “because everybody will think it’s a reference to Dune…” But after exactly 0.5 seconds of serious thought I decided I didn’t care: I liked the sound of those words; they were too good not to use. And the initial K seemed useful. I knew that in German-speaking cities there are often railway lines called the U-bahn and the S-bahn. My interstellar empire would be linked by the K-bahn, whose trains would go through K-gates and flash across a dimension called K-space to reach their far destinations.